Cleveland street tiles – foto Smith
Do the two streetmen above remind you at all of the Toynbee tile below? All three whisper Toynbee to me . . . same material, canvas, placement, and feel. Could be coincidence, could be inspiration, could be be.
per Wikipedia:
The Toynbee tiles (also called Toynbee plaques) are messages of unknown origin found embedded in asphalt of streets in about two dozen major cities in the United States and four South American capitals. Since the 1980s, several hundred tiles have been discovered. They are generally about the size of an American license plate (roughly 30 cm by 15 cm), but sometimes considerably larger. They contain some variation on the following inscription:
TOYNBEE IDEA
IN MOViE `2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER.
Some of the more elaborate tiles also feature cryptic political statements or exhort readers to create and install similar tiles of their own. The material used for making the tiles was long a mystery, but evidence has emerged that they may be primarily made of layers of linoleum and asphalt crack-filling compound. Many older tiles considered to be the work of the original tiler have been eroded by inner-city traffic, but as of 2011 older tiles remain in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; St. Louis, Missouri; Cincinnati and Cleveland, Ohio; and South America, among other locations.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toynbee_tiles.
downtown Cleveland Toynbee tile – foto Smith
ah.. the rebel artist lives and breathes in Cleveland…. I’ve never heard of the Toynbee tiles before.
Something to said for doing something unusual.
surprised it hasn’t been stripped or paved over…
I saw these little fellows in Memphis and in Washington DC